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Digital signage integrators working in the enterprise space need to be aware that their clients are on the front lines of a huge shift in the media landscape that is seriously impacting their roles. 7/23/2012 6:07 AM Eastern

Digital signage integrators working in the enterprise space need to be aware that their clients are on the front lines of a huge shift in the media landscape that is seriously impacting their roles.

The rules around corporate reputation management have changed dramatically. At one time, enterprise communication pros only had to worry about tracking traditional media outlets such as television, radio, and newspapers. Now, however, they also have to juggle Facebook posts, tweets, blogs, and various other influencers. A company’s reputation can now come under attack from a multitude of possible sources, and digital technology has made it possible for those attacks to escalate and spread extremely quickly. Corporations must respond to an e-crisis within minutes and manage a variety of potentially hostile online conversations. Complicating things even further is that these conversations may be taking place at multiple levels, including customer to customer, within technology user groups, public social media sites, mainstream media sites, and many others.

This fundamental shift is fostering significant opportunities for digital signage integrators working in the enterprise space. Corporate communications departments require new tools to monitor and analyze the social media world and in the case of a crisis, quickly and effectively protect their company’s reputation. Digital signage plays a vital role in this process. Dedicated screens displaying social media content from multiple sources have become the corporate communicator’s vital link to monitoring their company’s reputation in realtime. The content displayed on the screens can be shared among various departments and on a variety of devices to help coordinate an efficient and consistent response. This is especially important as the communications role becomes more decentralized and other groups such as sales and marketing and the office of the CEO play a bigger part in coordinating a response. Analytics can also be employed to determine where the crisis originated, the frequency of posts, or the level of the threat. Realtime data has always played a significant role in digital signage, and social media content is one of the most important realtime data sources for enterprise clients.

Vern Freedlander is vice president of production services for Montréal-based X2O Media, a full-service provider of technology, network management, and content services for professional digital signage applications. With more than 20 years of broadcast television experience as a producer, director, and executive, Freedlander oversees all of X2O Media’s content initiatives. He can be reached at vern@x2omedia.com.